I know I’ve been remiss in posting a new blog, but I’ve been a bit under the weather – so haven’t done much in terms of photography. However, I recently decided that I might as well take a look at some of my images I hadn’t thought very much of. It really is amazing (at least to me) what a little bit of editing can do to an otherwise plan photograph.

This was a photograph I took of one of my two cats – let me introduce Clyde to you. By The way his sister is Bonnie so you can image their personality. I keep all my images cataloged in Lightroom so it’s easy for me to view, and edit my images. I opened this image in Photoshop – and yes – I’m using Photoshop CS6 beta which I think is awesome. I did a slight crop, and then went to Nik Vivasa filter to adjust the image. And that’s it! I don’t think it took me longer than 3 minutes to bring the image to an acceptable photo. Well, at least Clyde likes it now. Hope you do, too.

I am totally in love with Photoshop. It is an amazing program that gives todays photographer creative tools that wasn’t even imagined ten years ago.

One of my favored features is contact aware which can be used with a variety of tools. I use this to spot retouch my images, or to sometimes manipulate an image to create the look I wanted, but wasn’t able to capture. This was true of the example below. I had an assignment in Italy, and spent a very, very short time in Venice. I wanted to show the wonderful cancels in a classic way. Unfortunately a power boat sat in the middle of the image, but I took the shot anyway. When I got home I opened my digital darkroom and simply (well, with a bit of work) removed the offensive boat.

To accomplish this I used the lasso tool, the magic wand, and the patch tool. First I created a duplicate layer. Then working at 100% magnification I carefully made my selections, and then shift/deleted the selection I had made – each on a separate layer to give me an escape plan. Occasionally you have to redo the deletion. Each time you do it will be somewhat different until you get what you are looking for. Anyway this is the before and after images.

If you found this helpful (or just interesting) please [like] it, and share it with others.

I recently started looking at ways to combine images to create unique photographs that either tell a story, or that make a somewhat uninteresting photograph something you might want to look at twice.

The first example is a series of four shots I took at the US Opens of Novak Djokovic playing tennis. In reviewing my shots I saw that I had been able to capture his serve. However, each individual photograph didn’t really convey what was happening. So I decided to combine the four shots in order to tell the story. To combine the four images I brought them into Photoshop from Lightroom, and sized the images so that they all were the same. Then I opened a new file (File > New) at the same resolution of my images with the size that would accommodate all  four images with a little extra white space. I copied, and pasted each image into my new file, and adjusted the placement so I had just a slight white space between each. I than cropped the final image, and made my final image adjustment – saved – and done!

The next example is a photograph I took on a trip to the Finger Lakes region. I liked the lines in the image, but it really wasn’t as interesting as I thought it would be. So from Lightroom I opened the image in Photoshop and flipped it horizontally. and saved it. Now I had one image going left, and the other image going right. I than opened both images, and again, made a new file that would hold both images. I than copied and pasted the images to create the ‘V’ shape and saved it. Once I had my completed image I used Nik filters to enhance the colors. By the way I always sharpen at the end after I’ve determined the final size of the image. Hope this post inspires you to take a second look at your images, and see if there are images hidden in them you can expose.

This is the before and after:

Before

After

The first thing I do is soften the focus on the entire image. I use Nik Sharpening Plug-In, but you can use your own method. With Nik I soft focus everything, click on the ‘brush‘ which creates a layer mask, and simply apply the filter exactly where I want it to be soft.

Then I work on the eyes, and mouth. There’s an excellent ‘how to’ article in the October 2011 issue of Popular Photography (pg. 42) which gives you the step-by-step – this is an overview.

All of these directions are done on selections that you first make using the Lasso tool.

• 1) First work on the eyelashes by using a very tiny brush, and drawing them so they are very clear, and sharp.

• 2) Now you can work on the eye-shadow area using Hue/Saturation in a adjustment layer.

• 3) Add contrast to the eye with a Curve Layer, and then using the Soft Light Blend Mode via the opacity to create the look you want.

• 4) To brighten the whites in the eye use another Curve Adjustment Layer.

• 5) Finally go back to your method of sharpening and sharpen the eyes.

Please let me know if this was helpful, and, please share other methods you may have discovered with me.

With digital your limited by the size of the card your storing your images on, and the size of the image based on your camera – the larger the megapixels of your camera the larger the file it makes. Since cards now come in very large sizes some photographers use the camera as they would a machine gun. Not my kind of photography, but I’m not judging (too, much).

With Film your limited my the ASA of the film you’re using. ASA refers to the amount of light needed to render an image. The lower the ASA (25 ASA) the more light is required.

In the digital world you can adjust the sensitivity of each exposure via the ISO. Each time you double the ISO (100 to 200) you reduce the amount of light you need by half. This allows you to shoot in a variety of situations from bright sun to indoors without changing anything but the ISO. Of course, with a higher ISO (400+ ) you run the risk of increasing noise in the image (noise looks like grain in a film image), but this can be reduced in the digital darkroom.

This brings me to the biggest difference – the darkroom. In the world of film you have to work in literally a dark room, with only a red light to guide you when you make a print. Your limited to burning, dodging and toning in the darkroom, and retouching is done on the final print. you can adjust tonality by the way you develop the film, but it’s not an exact science, and requires a lot of practice,

The reason I have totally embraced the world of digital photography is the digital darkroom. I shoot only in RAW, and I recommend anyone shooting seriously to do the same. This gives me complete control of almost every aspect of the image. The only thing you have to remember is that while in film you should expose for the shadows, and develop for the highlights – in digital you expose for the highlights, and then make adjustments in the digital darkroom. specifically, you expose for the brightest area in an image where you still want to retain detail.

In my next post I’m going to talk about workflow so please stay tuned.